O Lord God of my salvation, I have cried day and night before Thee.
A portrait of a suffering man
I. Depicting his wretched state. He speaks of himself as “full of troubles,” satiated with sufferings.
1. He represents himself as tottering on the grave and without power (Psalms 88:2-5).
2. Crushed by agonies and conscious of the Divine displeasure (Psalms 88:6-7).
3. Bereft of friends, and the subject of social contempt (Psalms 88:8).
4. Deprived of liberty and exhausted with grief. “I am shut up,” etc. (Psalms 88:8).
II. Supplicating his afflicting God. This he did--
1. With unremitting earnestness (Psalms 88:1). To whom can human sufferers look for help, but to the God of “salvation”? And to look to Him with earnest constancy is at once our duty and our interest.
2. With profound inquiries (Psalms 88:10-12). The living have a profound interest in the dead.
3. With pious determination (Psalms 88:13).
4. With painful apprehension (Psalms 88:14-18). (Homilist.)
Heman’s sorrowful psalm
From this psalm--
I. Learn how to pray.
1. Tell the Lord your case.
2. Pray naturally.
3. Pray with this belief fixed in your mind, that your help must come from God, and pray expecting salvation from the Lord.
4. Pray often.
5. With weeping and mourning.
6. Pleadingly.
II. Resolve to pray in your very worst case. When you are full of troubles, go to God with them, that is the very time when you most need to pray. “But,” say you, “Mr. Spurgeon, you do not know all that I have to think of.” No, but I do know that, the more you have to think of, the more reason you have to go to God in prayer about it. The more loads you have to drag, the more horses you need; and the more work there is to be done, the more reason is there for crying to God to help you to do it. Do not, I pray you, stay away from the outward means Of grace when you are in trouble; but especially do not stay away from God Himself when you are tried and perplexed. When you are as full of trouble as ever you can be, then is the time to pray most. “But I have nobody to speak to,” says another. Never mind if you have not; that is all the more reason why you should pray to God, and plead with God, who will not leave you. “But I am distracted,” says another. Yes, and you will be distracted, unless you will go to God as you are, and implore Him to look at your distractions, and to lay His gentle hand upon you, and to restore you to yourself, and then to restore you to Himself.
III. Reasons why you should keep on praying.
1. You cannot lose anything by prayer.
2. It is not so great a thing, after all, to have to continue to ask. As a sinner I kept God waiting for me long enough, aye, far too long.
3. Cease not to pray, for He to whom thou prayest is a gracious God. Take good heart; thou wilt not plead in vain, for He loves to hear thy prayers. He must, He will, answer thee, for He is a God of grace.
4. He has heard others.
5. He has promised to hear thee. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
No trouble too great for God to lift
The tide was out. A great ocean steamer lay at the wharf, loaded to the line; by its side was a little boat that danced on top of the waves. The big iron ship grew worried, and said to the dancing, happy boat: “I fear, when the tide comes in, I’m so heavy it can’t lift me, and I’ll go to the bottom.” “Never fear,” said the smaller one, “it can lift thee as well as me.” “Oh but you are so light, while I’m so heavy. It’s easy enough to lift you, but me--oh, dear! Worry not, worry not, old ironsides. It’s lifted the likes o’ you many a time, and will soon lift thee as well as me.” And the tide came in; up and up they both rose on the bosom of the sea; one lifted as high and as easy as the other. Great heart, loaded to the line with thine own sorrows and others’ burdens, filled with fears and worried with doubt, thou wilt not go down. (The Advertiser.)